Louis Jensen

rdf:langString Louis Jensen

rdf:langString The Danish author Louis Jensen (19 July 1943 – 4 March 2021) was an innovator in the international literary trends of flash fiction, metafiction, prose poetry, and magical realism. While he published more than 90 books for both adults and children, he was best known for his children's books, which include picture books, short stories, flash fiction, creative nonfiction and novels. His work is characterized by wordplay and playful experiments in form and structure, which have led critics to draw comparisons to Borges, Calvino, Gogol, and the poetry of the Oulipo movement. His work is also rooted in the fairy tale and folk tale tradition, and is deeply influenced by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. In 1992, Jensen published the first volume of 100 stories in his "Square Story" project. Over the course of the next 24 years, he accomplished his goal of writing 1001 of these very short stories, each in the shape of a square. The stories were collected into volumes of 100 stories each; in 2016 he published his tenth volume of 100 stories, and an eleventh volume with a single, final story. The Danish author and literary critic Rikke Finderup has called this work "one of the most radical literary projects in all of Danish literature," and the Square Stories have found an audience among adult readers as well as children. In Jensen's many literary works for children and for adults, the reader encounters an imaginative landscape where anything can happen. According to critic Anna Karlskov Skyggebjerg, "In most of Louis Jensen's books, the main character has something to do with the supernatural, the magic, or the fantastic." But like his literary forefathers H.C. Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Jensen uses his fantastical settings to portray a world of real dangers, moral and physical, and real human experiences of love and loss. As Skyggebjerg remarks, "In Jensen's books, there is a great deal of cruelty and evil, but also love and friendship between different creatures and humans." Jensen received multiple awards and prizes. He was nominated several times for both of the most prestigious international awards in children's literature, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. He made the short list (5 authors, nominated from 34 countries) for the Hans Christian Andersen Award two times, in 2010 and again in 2016. In 2002, he was chosen by the Danish National Art Foundation to be included on the roster of 275 Danish artists who are awarded an annual stipend for their lifelong contributions to the arts and culture of Denmark. In 2014, he was nominated for the Nordic Council Children and Young People's Literature Prize for his eighth collection of square stories, published in 2012. The Nordic Council praised the "humour and seriousness" of Jensen's work, suggesting that his stories have "brought greetings from Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and E. T. A. Hoffman and other great poets to all the children and adults who just wanted to read along."